


Goodbye Backwards

by anslin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Homophobia, M/M, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 12:15:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5290310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anslin/pseuds/anslin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean was little, his mother used to tell him that angels were watching over him. She hung a porcelain doll with paper wings on his door and said it would keep the bad things away, and he believed her. Every night, he would kiss its cheek before falling asleep and thank it in whispered words for keeping him safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goodbye Backwards

When Dean was little, his mother used to tell him that angels were watching over him. She hung a porcelain doll with paper wings on his door and said it would keep the bad things away, and he believed her. Every night, he would kiss its cheek before falling asleep and thank it in whispered words for keeping him safe.  
When Sammy first came home, Dean took the angel from its perch and slept with it on the floor of his baby brother’s room to protect him. Mary found him in the early morning, and she carried him gently back to his bed and kissed his forehead softly.  
Smoothing his sandy hair back from his forehead, she promised him with soothing words that she would always be there, whenever he needed her.  
In the safety of darkness, she promised him she would never leave.  
Six months later Dean stood outside the charred remains of his home with Sam in his arms. He watched fearfully as his world crumbled into ash, and cried quietly when John rushed him into the Impala and drove away.   
A blackened porcelain doll was recovered from the rubble after it had cooled down, skin cracked and wings burned away. No one claimed it, and it was forgotten.

When he was ten, Dean kissed another boy behind a cement wall in the school yard. Warmth blossomed in his chest in a way he hadn’t remembered feeling since his mother died, and for the first time he thought that maybe everything would be alright.  
He thought it was something beautiful, but then a teacher found them and he was suspended for the rest of the week. John yelled at him at first, but his rage seemed to spill from him and soon all he was left with was a bitter feeling that silenced him to his older son.  
Dean’s father didn’t talk to him for two weeks, until he kissed a girl, swallowing the wrongness that welled up inside him, because he had already lost one parent, and he didn’t want to lose two.

Sam didn’t grow up with a mother to tell him that angels were watching over him, so Dean did instead. Using tape, old clothes, and rubber elastics, he made a doll like he used to have and gave it to his brother to fall asleep with while their father was out hunting.  
He always made sure to hide it before John came home, because he was scared what would happen if he found out. He did it anyway, though, because it was the only way he could thing of keeping his mother alive.  
But children grow up, elastics break, clothes tear, and tape falls away. And when the angel was in tatters, and Sammy didn’t want it anymore, Dean went out to the back of the motel and buried it in the ground. He would never admit it, but he cried then, because it felt like he was burying his mother, and his old life, all over again.

As he got older, John began to disappear for longer, leaving the boys alone for days. One day, a grizzled old man who called himself Bobby came and told Dean that his father was going to be away for awhile. He said that he would take care of the two of them until their father came back.  
Dean only lowered the gun once he saw the letter John had sent with him.

Later, Bobby asked him why the first thing he had done was hold a gun to his head. All Dean would say is that he had learned that angels weren’t watching over anyone, certainly not him.

The first case he went on with his father was in a small, run-down church in Ohio with a crumbling steeple and broken windows. It was decrepit, and haunted by pilgrims who had breathed their last breath under this building’s sanctuary. Together they dug up bleached white bones and burned them with salt  
There was nothing special about it, except for, as they were leaving, Dean passed a dirty stained-glass window of a man with a golden halo around his head. Covered in grime and faded, he decided that even if angels had existed, they weren’t here anymore.

When John died, Dean forgot everything he believed in and prayed by his father’s bedside for someone to save him. He didn’t pray for angels, or God, but just for mercy, because he knew anything he could say would be fruitless.

When Castiel first came into Dean’s life, he refused to accept that angels were real. It was a matter of principle really, he knew that if he did accept it, he would never be able to forgive the world for tearing his family apart.  
Instead, he steeled his heart and plunged his knife into Castiel’s chest. It didn’t make him feel any better.

When the angel betrayed heaven to save the two brothers, Dean grudgingly admitted that maybe what had happened hadn’t been anybody’s fault. But blame doesn’t disappear, it festers, and so he blamed himself instead.

Cas (when did he start caling him that?) never learned to knock, and so really it was inevitable when he appeared in Dean’s room to find him crying over the motel sink, blood dripping down the dirty basin, slowly sucking Dean’s life down the drain. He was shaking badly, and in his other hand he held a razor blade, crimson where it was once silver.  
Quietly, sadly, the angel padded over to him and placed his hand over the bleeding cuts, urging the skin to knit back together. Dean lurched and turned away, but Cas held his arm, stroking the scars as a reminder to Dean that he was a survivor, and had nothing to feel guilty for.  
He took the blade from his hand and cleaned the blood with a wet cloth. Then he turned Dean around and hugged him, saying he would always be there for him.  
Dean shoved him away, and walked out without a word.

Anonymous letters started being left wherever Dean looked, saying It’s not your fault, and I miss you, and finally, I love you. Each one he tore apart, but instead of burning them, he kept them in a small box, and he would piece them together and read them sometimes, late at night when Sammy was asleep and there was no one there to see him.

If you were to ask him, Dean would never have admitted to having ever cried, but a few weeks later he broke down and sobbed, whimpering Cas’ name as the darkness seemed to enclose him. In a flurry of wings, he was there, and he held the other man, rocking him gently, until Dean turned and kissed him, faintly feeling the beauty of that moment in the school yard.  
Castiel looked at him worriedly, but he kissed him back and whispered soothing words in his ear as if it was enough to heal the gashes in his heart, because it had to be.  
He fell asleep in the angel’s arms almost like someone at peace with themselves but in the morning he wouldn’t look Cas in the eye and pushed him away whenever he got close.

John’s voice mourned his son’s degradation, ringing every second of every day in Dean’s ears. He called himself terrible words and buried himself in the arms of women he didn’t know for more than the night to try and block it out.  
He thought about how he had disappointed his mother, how he had failed at even the most basic human instinct because he loved the wrong kind of person and whenever the brothers saw Cas during a case he would roll down the sleeve of his flannel to cover the fresh scars.

He came at night, and like always, he didn’t knock, simply appeared. He watched Dean tense in his fitful slumber and with sad eyes he laid a hand gently on his forehead and eased him into a guiltless sleep.  
He lay down on the other side of the bed and spent the night imagining what it would be like to wake up to the other man smiling at him the way he craved.  
He was gone before the sun began to rise.

Really, the angel should have been able to foresee it. There was nothing different or special about this case, except for in the glare of the sun he though he might’ve seen Dean smile at him for the first time in what felt like forever and it was all he could think about.  
The blade was plunged in his side so quickly he didn’t have time to think, only to howl in pain as it ripped through his ethereal being.  
As he fell, his trench coat flapping around him like a cloak, his eyes locked with emerald irises and all he could do was watch as the demon grinned leeringly at the man that he loved.  
When he died his wings were seared onto the dirty ground and a dying light blazed through the breaks in his skin. When the rise and fall of his chest finally stopped and his belabored breathing died, Dean laid his head against Castiel’s chest and closed his eyes.  
He wished that he could have the chance to show the angel how much he loved him, no matter how wrong it was, but his lips were cold and unmoving when he kissed them and he was left staring at the tears on the face he loved more than anything as water ran down his cheeks.  
His mother had been right, angels were watching over him, but she was dead, and now his angel was too.


End file.
